Advice about Starting & Promoting a Fashion Blog - See Post #1 for Thread Rules

[kbella]

^ I agree with Serenity*Now, you need to try and connect with readers, and that means leaving comments. I think it's quite courteous to return a comment, it shows you've acknowledged the person and can quite often make someones day (I know it does when people comment on mine). I would try and think of something worthwhile to say, after reading a few posts (not necessarily the most recent) and to thank them for your comment if they've left you one. Maybe visit Independent Fashion Bloggers and introduce yourself on the forums, and definitely post on tfs.

I don't think you should worry about profile views; I don't think they truly gauge a site's popularity (some sites have relatively few views, but more followers), and they're not that accurate anyway. You'd be better off with a stat counter, to see what your readers like to visit and where they're coming from, maybe setting up a few link exchanges on likeminded blogs.

[rainy_spring]

Originally Posted by Serenity*Now

Gosh, I don't think I can tell who comments for the sake of commenting on my blog or the blogs I read. I just felt part of the blogging/friendship community.

My immediate impression is -I sense that you're frustrated and your blog even says it was created out of frustration. Are you having fun & joy with it??
Same thing about the blog comments; you need to find some blogs you enjoy. But it's hard to expect ppl to visit and comment if you're not interested in doing so in reciprocation. To me, it's nice to get a "hello" even if you don't have something worthwhile to say. Or just something that you like, have an opinion about, or a helpful additional tidbit re: someone else's posts. Anything.

Also I would think that you would meet enough people during fashion week that the networking and *ideas* from that alone could propel you for several months. IF that is to be your niche--CA designers & the industry there.
And this is totally just my NONexpert opinion, but I don't think ppl follow personal blogs that much-what you're doing, about your hair, etc., unless you're famous or people really connect with you.

Your blog heading is cool but the picture is so big I have to scroll down before I see anything of you. The blogging experts, remember...I ain't one!, say that you should have something specific at the top. And that the top $-making ads are those at the top; people are lazy and don't want to scroll way down to see something. Blog directories are good too. You want people to come and stay, or come and come back because of your content.

Either do it for YOU and have fun; who cares who comes and who doesn't!! or if you want to focus on a niche and get people coming, you gotta play the game.
my $.02

what i love is the truth in this. my blog does SO much better and gets all the comments on the posts that i really had fun writing or researching or finding pictures for. the posts that i post (for the sake of posting, or because i haven't written something in a couple days get zero reaction). i truly found that when i'm happiest with my blog i get the most out of it from the readers, more comments, visitors, etc. so i say blogging what you like and what makes you happiest is truly best

[fashionfille]

Hey everyone, I subscribe to this thread and find it extremely helpful, all the comments are great! My blog is going to be one year old in July and I'm about to start college and get super busy, so I'm looking for some help making the whole blog better looking, more efficient for me and my readers, and just upgrade it. Any and all comments and feedback is welcome, don't be afraid of being mean! I'm looking forward to hearing what you all have to say. The link is: www.fashionfille.com.

[Susanna-Cole]

Many bloggers have contacted me asking me for advice on how to get a lot readers. They ask me how I did it, and I have to tell them that I don't have that many readers, what I have is a lot of comments, which, contrary to much belief and statisics even, doesn't always match readership numbers.

Starting late 2008/early 2009 or so, almost all entries I posted reached between 100-160 comments on average. From reading some articles, apparently research has show that about 1 in every 100 visitors to a blog, are likely to comment. Following this, I should have had around 10,000 visitors or so then, for every 100 comments, but I had no where near that many visitors.

Which proves what I've often suspected: readership numbers do not always match with the number of comments, and more readers does not automatically equal more comments.

I don't have any secret formula, I didn't try gimicks or test strageties to recieve comments, it just happened, and honestly, I am always slightly dumfounded by how many people comment on my blog. I don't why, and I personally don't think I am, or that my blog is, anything all that special.

But I do believe, in short, that if you want more readers, give them a reason to read, but if you want more comments, you have to give readers a good reason to comment.

Anyway, I don't know if this is helpful, whatsoever, to any of you, so I'll stop all my rambling here. And while I certainly don't have all the answers, I have learned a lot from a year of blogging, so if you have any general questions, feel free to ask, I'd be more than happy to try and help you out.

[Dija]

Thanks for the advice everyone! I had originally started my blog because I had gotten lazy and got stuck in a style-rut. I became frustrated with myself and started the blog as a way to get myself out of a style-rut, to stop being lazy, and get feedback from others. I'm not frustrated with my blog, but more so myself. Having a blog has given me opportunities that I otherwise wouldn't have had.

Should I make my blog less personal? Or should I post more about the industry, specifically the Canadian fashion industry?

Also, when I first started the blog, my 'niche' was developing my personal style, but as I continued with the blog, I became less comfortable with posting my outfits since my style isn't groundbreaking and started focusing more on other things. Now I'm thinking my niche would be documenting my try at breaking into the Canadian fashion industry. Would that be of interest to anyone? A friend of mine has a blog and she wasn't happy with hers and gave it a makeover and now she's really happy and I can tell when I read the blog.

About commenting: Serenity*Now you've pinned me, because most of the time when I read blogs that I like, I feel like I have nothing worthwhile to say. I should change that, and start telling my favourite bloggers what I liked about their post.

I'm definitely working on the layout, it's such a work in progress. I need some photoshop tutorials or something like that.

Thank you all again for the advice and I'm definitely taking it all in consideration.

[VogueParisLover]

Hi everybody!
I recently changed some things about my blog to make it look flashier. What do you guys think about it? Was it for better or for worse? And I still want to change my header, I'm thinking about using a photo from Natalia Vodianova's editorial from Vogue Italia April 2008. What do you think? Just click the link in my signature. TIA!

[from: sophia]

Originally Posted by Hebden

Somehow it's so much easier to have strangers read what you write than people you actually know....I get embarrassed/nervous when friends read mine...

I know I havent told anyone I actually know about my blog

[peggysummer]

I just found out about this thread and it is so useful!

I started blogging in Feb because I was doing intern at a fashion house and people there wanted to enhance their presence on the web. As a marketing assistant, I was assigned the job of starting a fashion blog. To be honest, I had never imaged myself doing this. It was very difficult for me in the beginning as other people write their blogs as a hobby but I was doing a job. And I hated the fact that I can’t get too personal with it as technically it’s still not my blog. With the growing readership, I gradually developed a passion for it. But compared with most blogs here, my blog’s readership is very small and I don't got many comments.

It would be great if you guys could have a look at my blog and tell me what you think of it. Just click the link in my signature.Thanks.

[ched]

First, I hate the word "blog," because it seems like a lot of blog posts are just three sentences and a stolen picture. I know there are a lot of blogs that are not so shallow, but I think the perception of a lot of people who aren't tech savvy, or really interested in The Internet as a medium, is that blogs are fluff and inconsequential. I don't want what I'm doing to be thought of that way. That said, our latest post is entitled "German Shoe Porn."

This is our... Journal: http://www.modacycle.com/

I'm the editor (who really needs spell check), we have a photo editor who is really on the ball, about 12-15 photographers pitch in at different times, and we have three non-photographer writers who continue to contribute the occasional piece. You've probably seen a bunch of our stories reposted by Andrea here at TFS on the main page. We did a ton of them during NY Fashion Week back in February, and recently for Milan Moda Uomo and Berlin Fashion Week.

I made the leap from Blogger to Word Press less than a month ago and this whole world of plugins and SEO and all sorts of other interesting stuff opened up when I did that. It's been an intense few weeks trying to figure out what all the parts do and how to do the things I see other people doing on other sites. It took me two days in the middle of the Berlin shows of searching for plugins to figure out in the end that WordPress 2.8 has a gallery function built-in... !

Despite a clear mission, our content is all over the place. Mostly it is written by fashion photogaphers like myself. I tell the guys to write about what they feel is interesting. Today we posted our first actual photo editorial, which is a really simple color story, shot inside Yeohlee's atelier and styled by the designer herself. A few months ago, I interviewed Anna Molinari, the designer behind Blumarine. That was really interesting. Most of our recent content has come from our photographers in Europe, as they have been covering the men's shows in Milan and just this last week Berlin Fashion Week (thus, the "German Shoe Porn" post). We'll probably be covering Berlin and Milan Moda Uomo stuff for at least the next week and a half because the guys shot so much in the 4 days of shows, we're just chipping at the tip of the iceberg of content they dragged in.

I'm still figuring out the whole advertising thing. Pay per click (cost per click?) ads like Google Adsense don't make a lot of sense to me, becasue the advertiser is building a lot of brand awareness from the high percentage of people who don't click the ads. I think I just have to go find my own underwriters directly, and run it like PBS. If that works it will be great.

I want to find more writers, definitely, because we need to have faster turnaround on our coverage. More specifically, I want to find more fashion photographers and models and makeup artists who can write, and more people in distant places who can do interviews with local designers.

Our stated mission in the beginning was to document examples of innovation and exceptional design in the fashion industry. We're still doing that, and I'm really happy that we are. I hope the vision and purpose endures. It makes a lot of sense to me that it should. I mean, why be a fashion photographer if you aren't awed by what is occasionally in front of you?

[agneslo]

well, I have been blogging for almost a year. Really, it changes a lot in just a year. I don't plan to write something like that initially, it just comes out naturally as it does now. And now I would like to collect opinions from bloggers on TFS to see if there's any improvement I can make. Any opinions would be very welcomed. thanks

link can be found in my signature.

[Eleanor7]

I like your blog Agneslo. You have some very interesting photographes on there.

[sassybella]

I was chatting to a friend the other day about whether fashion blogs should just sign up for a Tumblr.

After all isn't that was most fashion blogs are? Photos and inspirations they like and have found on other blogs and websites?

I'm curious to know what everyone else's options are? Do you have a Tumblr and a fashion blog, and how do you differentiate the two or don't you?

[from: sophia]

^ I put less thought in to my tumbler and it is not fashion specific its just random images and some of my own drawings. On blogs I think that it is important to write not just post images and it should be more tailored to the rest of your blog. For example on my tumblr I would post a pic of a cute cat that has nothing to do with fashion on my blog I would not. Sassybella you should make a tumblr because on your site you write a lot and a tumblr would give you a chance to post whateveryou want on a whim.

[sassybella]

Thanks Sophia, I would start a Tumblr, well keep updating mine, if it wasn't a whole other thing to update you know. Once you have a fashion blog, you should get a Twitter, then eventually a Facebook page and whatever else is new.

Of course it all helps your blogs "branding" but when does it all stop.

End rant.

And yes, it is definitely important to have words in a blog unless you're a blog like Fail Blog or LOL Cats where the images speak for themselves

[kbella]

Just do as much as you want to do, no one has to get all of these things. When it stops becoming fun to update, the you need to rethink a few things. I personally think a blog and twitter is enough, but i may start a tumblr for more spontaneous things.